The Permutation

Interlude - Lucille

Friday 1 a.m. November 4th

Lucille Dormer turned off her television set and thanked her lucky stars that Harold wasn't around to see this. Her late husband would have stormed down to city hall complaining about the current state of Lancet Falls.

"It's these damn corporations struttin' inta town preaching about change and "progress" when they're just sellin' snake oil. Want us God fearin' folks as miserable as the rest of em. The way I see it, we was just fine before."

She'd loved the old coot, but she had to admit it was quieter without him, more time to focus on her puzzles. And her gossip. Harold had been concerned hunting, farming, and coming home to a home-cooked meal after a long day, what other folks was up to wasn't no concern of is. Lucille smiled. He wasn't truly gone with all his familiar rants living on inside of her.

Lucille retrieved her dentures from the glass on her bedsides table maneuvered herself out of bed in a slow and methodical fashion, caution informing every movement. The last thing she needed was to take a tumble at this hour. She knew she was rolling the dice living alone at her age, but she'd rather bust a hip than live with those old loons at ValleyView. She puttered her way to her living room to work on one of her puzzles. It was a beautiful 1,000 piece purple sunset, the right amount of majesty and challenge.

She knew a woman of her age ought to be sleeping at this hour, but the aches in her bones had other plans. When she'd been a younger woman, Lucille always used to boast that her aches told her when a storm was brewing. A month had come and gone with her joints aching like they got sand in the works, and still no storm.

She gritted her dentures together, feeling it in her gums, and trudged onward through the pain. At this point, the Compendium of Gossip is all that kept her going. Lucille's mind had always been too active to be a stay at home mother, so she put her mind to work. She had appointed herself as the chronicler of the happenings of Lancet Falls. Lucille took a great deal of pride in the fact she knew about all the affairs, debts, and dirty little secrets on just about everyone, not that she would ever use it. She felt it important that somebody keep track of it all, and lately, that job felt more important than ever.

The myriad of facts and hearsay she had compiled from the local news and her gaggle of friends did nothing to help with the lack of sleep. If half of what she heard was true, the end times were coming, and Lucille would be the one to document it all.

In the past month, the local news went from covering the local high school's running back every night to having to compete with national news outlets. It all started with that string of killings in early October. Lyle Hampton, Jill Hampton, and that Saul Gutierrez had all been found their bellies ripped open over the course of one night. After that, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone looking for the inside scoop on Lancet Fall's very own homegrown serial killer, but Beatrice "Betty" Ploss had it on good authority the serial killer story was a cover. Her grandson, little Christopher Stroud, the local biology teacher, had been called in for an outside opinion she had said, chest swelled with pride.

Under normal circumstances, the media circus would have died down in a couple of days, but those killings were only the beginning in a long line of strange happenings. A bow hunter over in Filer, Idaho strolled into town the following day with a hell of a project for Hester Jenkins, the best damn taxidermist in the state. The dumbass brought in an affront to God's creation thinking it was some sort of black eagle.

Course the media was on that one like stink on cheese, and now all of a sudden Idaho was home to what must be some prehistoric species of bird. That same string days, the Lancet Times posted a back page article about little Lawrence Merrill going out to play and never coming home. Poor kid was small news compared to a trio of sensational serial killings, but that didn't mean Lucille hadn't caught wind of it.